If you've opened Instagram or TikTok in the last month you've seen this bottle: dark green, ribbed like an old seltzer bottle, sitting next to somebody's very clean kitchen sink. It's Flamingo Estate's Heirloom Tomato hand soap in the new glass bottle, it costs $70, and the comments under every video are the same two words. Seventy dollars.

I haven't washed my hands with it, so this isn't a review of how it smells. Plenty of people have already told you that, and I'll pass along what they say further down. This is the part nobody's doing: the math. What you're actually paying for, what the refill costs, how it stacks up against the other expensive hand soaps per ounce and per wash, and the cheapest way to end up with that bottle on your counter, which isn't the way the brand's product page suggests.

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The glass bottle. 11 oz, custom molded, forest green, with a pump. This is the $70.

What $70 Actually Buys You

Here's the thing the product page doesn't put next to the price: Flamingo Estate sells this exact soap, same formula, same tomato leaf, tarragon and black pepper, in a 12 oz aluminum bottle for $50. The glass version is $70 and holds 11 oz. So you're paying $20 more to get one ounce less, and what you get for that $20 is the bottle.

That's not a scam, it's a business model. The glass is a vessel you're supposed to buy once. The aluminum is the refill, and it's designed to be poured into the glass, which is why the brand's own copy says the glass bottle was made to be refilled from the aluminum packaging. Think of it like a nice pepper mill: the first purchase includes the hardware, every purchase after that is just pepper.

So the way to think about it: if you'd buy this soap more than once anyway, the glass costs you about nothing over a year. If this is a one-time treat, the glass costs you $20 and an ounce of soap, and that's the honest price of the way it looks on a counter.

Price Per Ounce Against The Other Expensive Soaps

Per-ounce figures are simple division from each brand's own price (Neiman Marcus for Loewe); I rounded to the cent.

Two things jump out. Loewe is the only one that makes the Flamingo glass look reasonable, and the aluminum refill is the real price of this soap: $4.17 an ounce, or $3.75 if you let them ship it to you on a schedule. Everything above that line is the cost of the bottle.

What A Single Wash Costs

A pump dispenses roughly 1.5 to 2 milliliters, which is the range most bathroom soap pumps land in. The 11 oz glass bottle holds about 325 ml, so figure 160 to 215 washes per bottle. At $70 that's 33 to 44 cents a wash. The 12 oz refill is about 355 ml, or 180 to 235 washes, which works out to 21 to 28 cents at $50 and 19 to 25 cents on the $45 subscription.

For comparison, a $49 bottle of Aesop runs 500 ml and lands around 15 to 20 cents a wash. So the tomato refill costs about 40% more than Aesop per wash, and the first glass bottle about double. Whether that's a lot depends on whether your household washes its hands like a family of five or like one person who works from home.

The Cheapest Way To Own The Bottle

The route I'd avoid is the one the product page nudges you toward: buying the $70 glass, using it up, and buying another $70 glass. That's paying for the bottle twice, and at that point you're at $12.73 an ounce for hand soap.

What It Smells Like, According To People Who Own It

I'll say it again so nobody's misled: I haven't used it. What follows is the brand's own description and the things buyers keep repeating in their reviews.

Flamingo Estate calls it "a summer garden distilled": sun-warmed tomato leaf, wild tarragon from Oregon and Madagascan black pepper, with avocado and olive oils in the formula. That's tomato leaf, not tomato, which matters. Tomato-leaf scents are green and a little sharp, closer to a herb garden than a salad. The reviews on the aluminum version, which has a couple hundred of them, keep landing on the same words: clean, natural, "perfect kitchen hand soap," and gift, as in people buy it as one. The complaint I could find wasn't about the scent at all. It was the price, which is the whole reason this page exists.

If you already know you like this family of smell (Loewe's Tomato Leaves, Diptyque's Tomate candle, any of the tomato-vine candles that show up every August), you're the customer. If you've never smelled a tomato-leaf anything, the $46 brick or the $36 dish soap is the cheaper way to find out before you commit $70 to glass.

The Rest Of The Tomato Line

The hand soap is the bottle you see, but the line is a dozen products now, and a few of them are the better buy if what you actually want is the smell.

The one that started the tomato thing

Heirloom Tomato Candle

8 oz, $64 ($57.60 on subscription). The scent people mean when they say they're obsessed with Flamingo Estate. A 26 oz XL version is $200.

Check Price at Flamingo Estate →

The sleeper hit of the line

Heirloom Tomato Dish Soap

12 oz, $36 ($32.40 on subscription). Reviewers talk about it the way they talk about the hand soap, and it's half the price. If you want the scent at the sink for the least money, this is it.

Check Price at Flamingo Estate →

Same scent, no pump, $46

Heirloom Tomato Soap Brick

A 12 oz hand-poured bar. It's dropped off the brand's own site for now, and Bloomingdale's was down to low stock when I checked, so if you want one, don't sit on it.

Check Price at Bloomingdale's →

Where To Buy It

The glass bottle is sold by the brand. The aluminum refill is the one you'll buy over and over, and Anthropologie and Bloomingdale's both carry it at the same $50, which is handy if you'd rather bundle it into an order there. Bloomingdale's is also the only place I found the soap brick.

Buy It Or Skip It